Technology in Pharmacy Business with Scott Carpenter

Technology strengthening Independent Pharmacies in Australia

September 8, 2022

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Andrew Pattinson is the Head of Innovation for newly merged The Platform Alliance Group and in this episode of the Pharmacy View Podcast, talks to host Scott Carpenter, EVBC about the journey of the group and how technology has been pivotal to that.

Andrew has had a long and proud history in Pharmacy. The son of a Pharmacist, Andrew recalls how being no good at chemistry that Pharmacy wasn’t going to be a career choice. So Andrew went on to study Psychology at university while working at the family’s Pharmacy.

As an engaging business leader, Andrew chose to head down the path of consumer and organizational psychology and when working with a consulting firm involved with Pharmacies was pulled into the broader Pharmaceutical industry with Instigo. As a business, Instigo built new solutions for community Pharmacies. It started off just in loyalty and marketing, then they moved into merchandise services, professional health services, in-store clinic programs, business consulting and advisory services. And then over time, they formed strategic alliances with other groups and ended up providing outsourced solutions to those groups. That led to group mergers and have now formed The Platform Alliance Group—positioned to build the strongest Independent Pharmacy Network in Australia.

Through the network, Andrew shares that services are provided to two and a half thousand Pharmacists helping them understand their consumers and patients, shaping the future of Pharmacy, and improving the health of consumers and patients. As Andrew aptly puts it, their Member Pharmacies take in a million scripts each week and those million scripts are a million opportunities to improve patient outcomes. Saying that Health is a fantastic business to be in in the post-pandemic world and Andrew acknowledges that Pharmacies rose to the occasion and have been doing great work across Australia.

From today forward, Andrew firmly believes that the focus should be on optimizing the functions within a Community Pharmacy so that patient care can be maximized. Andrew believes that technology has a critical role to play in this and points out the following challenges that need to be overcome to get better outcomes:

Need to meet the patients/customers where they want to be met
Sufficient investment
Managing different technological platforms so that they communicate properly

Topics Covered

How the Platform Alliance Group was formed
Services provided by the group
How to optimize functions to maximize patient care
Use of technology
Challenges faced

Key Quotes (Time Stamps)

“I was unfortunately no good at chemistry. So, Pharmacy was never going to be the career for me. But I was fascinated by human behaviour. So, I then went on to study Psychology at university and was always working in the family’s Pharmacy and I headed down the path of consumer and organizational psychology.” (1:33 – 1:48)

“As a business, we built new solutions for community Pharmacies. We started off just in loyalty and marketing. We then moved into some merchandise services and some professional health services, some in-store clinic programs, and some business consulting and advisory services. And then over time, we formed strategic alliances with other groups and ended up providing outsourced solutions to those groups. (3:36 – 4:02)

“The Platform Alliance Group is now one of the largest groups in community Pharmacy supporting community Pharmacists around Australia. We have just over a thousand Member Pharmacies. And then if we look at our other technology support solutions, particularly across our automated buy-in platform and our loyalty and data extraction platforms, we provide services to two and a half thousand Pharmacists in helping them understand their consumers and patients, shaping the future of Pharmacy, and improving the health of our consumers and patients.” (4:31 – 4:59)

“Technology for technology’s sake is problematic. But embedded into a business plan, it is where technology will be more critical.” (6:13 – 6:19)

“We need to optimize so we can maximize.” (6:47 – 6:49)

“What functions within a community Pharmacy can you optimize so you have the time to maximize patient care?” (6:53 – 7:00)

“Over the last ten years, we’ve built a program called Buy-It-Right. It’s an automated ordering program; it has algorithms built in so you plug it in, it integrates with your POS, and you don’t need to place orders. The system does it directly. (8:34 – 8:48)

“We run a loyalty program, for I think our loyalty technology is in something like 900 Pharmacies. And it is something that I just think is the most efficient and direct-to-consumer communication channel that you can possibly have.” (11:39 – 11:56)

“The challenge we have in community pharmacy, I think, is to meet our consumers and patients where they want to be met.” (14:13 – 14:19)

“Technology is the way of the future. The next phase of innovation is all around technology and that makes it far more costly than the previous phases of innovation.” (15:01 – 15:12)